***Note: please Do Not Reply to this via email; if you would like to reply (and I would certainly value your thoughts), please do so through the new myPTG software (this topic is listed in CAUT in the new myPTG software, though it was originally in both Pianotech and CAUT). I am cross-posting here only because not everyone is over there yet.*** Like many PTG mailing list participants, I have thought quite a lot about our past mailing list format and our current change to the Higher Logic platform. I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but it seemed necessary. I would like to start off by thanking all who made the original mailing lists possible; I probably would not be a piano technician today without these lists. I would also like to thank those who are behind the current change for recognizing that it is time to move to a more advanced platform, and for recognizing that a more interactive and powerful environment will, in time, create the opportunity to fashion a stronger and more useful exchange of knowledge and skills among piano technicians. We are headed towards admirable goals, and the right goals. --- I do believe that it is vital for the PTG to recognize just how important these lists have become in the advancement of our craft. In order to illustrate this, speaking just for for myself: In any given month, I learn more from Ron Nossaman's posts than I do from reading the entire Journal. In any given month, I learn more from David Love's posts than I do from reading the entire Journal. In lots of months, I learn more from Del Fandrich's, or John Delacour's, or Dale Erwin's or Frank Emerson's or David Anderson's or Don Mannino's or Will Truitt's posts than I do from reading the entire Journal. I could add lots of other names there, as well.... The Journal is important; it affords the opportunity for extended coverage of topics such as Fred Sturm's very thoughtful and well researched tuning series. However, the ability to interact and to share media files makes the lists and whatever comes after the mailing lists potentially a more powerful vehicle for the advancement of our craft. Because of the importance of these lists and the collective willingness of many highly skilled, knowledgeable, creative, and articulate technicians to share their life experience through them, it is vital that we get the transition to what comes after them right. --- I remember years ago being on a camping trip in rural West Virginia and coming across a tiny hint of a town called something like "Broken Wagon Wheel." Yes, the founders' covered wagon had broken down, and instead of continuing their journey to the west, they decided to stop right there. Having poked around the Higher Logic site for a week now, it is crystal clear to me that our wagon wheel is broken. We have seen where we need to go, which is the most important part, but we are a long ways away from being there yet. We either have to fix this wagon and get on our way, or ditch it and get another wagon. California and gold aplenty await us, but we're stuck in rural West Virginia at the moment. Many, if not most list participants have surely participated in forums around the net, such as PianoWorld, woodworking forums, music forums, or whatever. Surely most of us recognize that the forum experience elsewhere is much simpler and much more powerful than the current Higher Logic PTG site. If we give the average forum a grade of 90% (they mostly work well), I would assign the current Higher Logic site maybe a 30%. It would have to get twice as good to rate a grade of D minus. I have to say it; it's that bad. --- I will now enumerate the necessary core functions of whatever will follow the mailing lists, as I see them. Higher Logic falls short in all of them at the moment. I certainly hope that we can work with Higher Logic in realizing or improving these functions, since we obviously have a significant investment in this. If not, we will have to move to a better system, in my opinion. Necessary Core Functions: 1) Clear and simple categories (communities), chosen by consensus by the members. While it seems positive that members can create new communities, it will only fracture our knowledge base and reduce participation after a certain amount of inevitable fragmentation and redundancy set in. We should choose our broad categories together, such as: Tuning, Action Rebuilding, Bellywork Rebuilding, Field Repairs, CAUT, Business and Customer Relations, History and Early Instruments, Off Topic, or something along those lines (just as an example; I'm not imposing anything here). If we later feel a need to add subcategories, we can do so in a nested fashion. That will allow each member easily to go to and participate in each area that they are interested in without excessive fragmentation. The list of these most important categories should be the first thing you see when you get to the site. When you click on the category, you should be brought immediately to a list of thread titles (see next point), or subcategories if we so choose. 2) Crystal clear threading. Other forum's have it right: the list of topics for each category (community) should be the first thing you see within the category, and the topic with the newest reply should be at the top. Topics that have a reply that you personally haven't read yet should have a bold title, alerting you to the presence of new content. When you click on the title of a topic, you should see the entire thread in chronological order. 3) Easy quoting without redundancy. Other forums make it very easy to quote or multi-quote from other members, and make it crystal clear what is being quoted and what is new content. They also make it easy to edit the quoted material down to its essence, bringing clarity to threads. While quoting is possible with the current Higher Logic software, take a look in thread view at the Young Chang pedal rod thingie thread, and you will see that it is much more complicated than it should be to figure out who is saying what when. Redundant and confusing quoting was probably the worst part of the mailing lists; it's time to move beyond that now. 4) Inline and simple integration of photos. While it was great that Fred Sturm posted photos in the Yamaha T-118 front panel thread, it is unacceptable that you have to make multiple clicks that take you away from the thread to see them. This is more than a decade behind the times, and worse than the mailing lists. 5) Inline and simple integration of sound files. We should be able to easily embed sound files within our posts as well, as sound is critical to our profession's existence and practice. If you haven't experienced inline sound before, you can go to a recording engineer's site to see how useful this will be for us: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/remote-possibilities-acoustic-music-location-recording/589289-trumpet-piano-sample-feedback-please.html (My apologies if anyone is offended by the name of the forum; it's sort of an inside joke among engineers, as there are a lot of perpetually-broke engineers who "can't say no" to a shiny new microphone or preamp). 6) Easy editing of one's posts. This just makes for clear threading. The current re-posting as a new post after editing makes for an even more confusing reading of the thread. --- That's my list, and as I said, I hope that we can address these inadequacies within Higher Logic. If, not, I am in favor if ditching it for something better. I see Dale Probst over at the bt3central (woodworking) site, which is undergoing a fundraising campaign at the moment. That site costs $3800 a year to operate, which includes the internet connection, servers, backup hard drives, electricity, and software licenses. And that forum works much better. --- I'm sure that some folks are probably ticked at me for writing this up, but this is too important to get wrong. I am willing to be part of the solution. Sometimes clearly articulating the problem is an important part of the solution. I am willing to participate in other ways as well. I do want to address one final thing: I believe that the top-down imposition of this change upon this group without seeking group input was not the proper procedure (I know there was a test in CAUT, but little or nothing in Pianotech). I don't say that because we pay the bills around here (although we do, via our dues); I say it because many, many technicians have given countless hours of their lives to share their hard-won progress and knowledge in this field with each other (with their competitors, really), and those hours have bought those technicians a very real sense of ownership of these lists. In the past week, I have not seen any participation by some of the members whose input I most value, and I am getting a little concerned. Let's work together to get this right, and to get everyone back on board. These mailing lists and whatever follows them are a truly important part of our profession's history and our way forward. Although this may seem critical, it is written with tremendous gratitude towards my fellow technicians and towards the PTG, Joe DeFazio Pittsburgh ***Note: please Do Not Reply to this via email; if you would like to reply (and I would certainly value your thoughts), please do so through the new myPTG software (this topic is listed in CAUT in the new myPTG software, though it was originally in both Pianotech and CAUT). I am cross-posting here only because not everyone is over there yet.*** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <https://www.moypiano.com/ptg/pianotech.php/attachments/20110308/b65d8a1d/attachment.htm>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC